


Across the Years

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Not A2A Compliant, Sam was back in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 08:02:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21454720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: Sam, Annie and Gene across the years, from the seventies to 2007.
Relationships: Annie Cartwright/Sam Tyler, Gene Hunt & Sam Tyler
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	Across the Years

**1976**

“Sam!” Gene barks from inside his office. Sam stops in his tracks; the tone is familiar, but being called Sam isn't. That's a 'Tyler' tone at best, a girl's name more likely. He pokes his head through the door.

“Guv?”

“Get in here and sit down.” Gene kicks the visitor chair with his foot, shoving it across the carpet. Sam sits, gingerly, wondering what could possibly have gone wrong. The last case – thanks to him – was watertight. “I don't know how much of this has been discussed,” Gene starts, leaning forwards with his hands steepled on the desk, “but I'm going to come right out and say it.”

“Okay...”

“I've written your plonk a reference for the Met.”

“The-” he stops. “The _London _Met?”

“I take it frilly knickers hadn't told you.” Gene digs in his desk, unearthing two familiar glasses and a bottle. He pours generous splashes of amber liquid out, nudging one across to Sam. He takes it and downs it, spluttering a little.

“Annie's...”

“Don't know how much you two got up to outside these walls and I don't want to know, unless it's entirely descriptions of her with her skirt up-”

“Gene!”

“It was a good reference, Sam.”

“She's going then?” He holds his glass out for more, and Gene obligingly refills.

“Reckon so.”

**1977**

It's been a long year, since Annie left. A long year of working on opposite sides of the country, of train trips any time one of them has more than a day off in a row. It's run them both ragged.

He just wants to come home to her. To cook her dinner, and sleep next to her, and kiss her good morning. That's why he's doing this.

“Guv,” he says, pushing open the door. He clutches a letter in his hand, a transfer request, but he knows Gene deserves to hear it from him, not written down, not couched in bureaucratic jargon, not passed on by a superior officer. From his DI, direct. That he's abandoning him. After everything.

Gene looks at the envelope, then back up. “Heading to London, are you?” Sam stares at him. “I am a detective, Tyler,” he snorts. “Give it here then.” He takes the letter and slices it opens, reads it with a face that gives nothing away. When he's finished, he folds it up and tucks it in his jacket pocket.

“Guv?” Sam repeats.

“It was a long time coming, Sammy boy.”

In the end, that's all Gene says on the matter. No recriminations, no pleas to stay – not that he really thought Gene would stoop to that. He's Sam's best friend, in a way, and they separate with no more than a clap on the back and goodbye drinks down the Railway Arms. He gets Sam wasted on that last night, enough to have him throwing up in the train toilets on the way down to London. Maybe that was Gene's revenge.

**1981**

Annie looks radiant in her jewel green dress. He's not a fair judge; he thinks she looks as ravishing in her work suits as she does in her finery, but he says it all the same. He whispers in her ear about upstaging the bride until she smacks him on the arm with a pleased smile.

“Sam,” she admonishes. “Becky seems really sweet.”

He agrees; Becky does seem sweet. She's such a good match for Chris that he's sure they'll have a very happy life together, bumbling along on the same wavelength and getting absolutely taken for a ride on a regular basis. He sees them falling for an email scam in the future, losing all their cash, and the local community helping them out because they're that kind elderly couple who give out sweets and nurse hedgehogs back to health.

The idea of a traditional wedding ceremony hasn't changed much across the years. He's pretty sure he sang Amazing Grace at the last one he attended, back in 2003, and drones it out again with the rest of the congregation – enthusiastic for the first verse then a bit shaky on the words for the second, with a good deal more rustling as everybody checks the hymn book lyrics. Afterwards, everyone swarms out of the church and down to a local pub, where the tables have been pushed back to form a makeshift dance floor, and the barman serves three drinks: red, white or beer.

“Tyler, Cartwright.”

“Guv,” spills out before he can stop it. Four years is not enough to break a habit it seems, but Gene just grins at him, shoving a pint into his hand. He finds himself smiling back.

“All keeping okay in the big smoke?” Gene gets Annie a white wine, and it might be coincidence or it might be that he's remembered through all these years.

“There'll always be criminals to catch.”

“They'll have a tougher go of it with you two on the case.”

Gene steals Annie away for a dance then, and Sam finds himself in a corner with Ray Carling, best man. He finds him easier to deal with now though, now that there's a time limit and when he heads off to the hotel for the night he can count on not running into Ray for at least another couple of years. They talk football, and cases, and steer clear of anything too controversial. He avoids calling Ray a throwback and Ray manages not to call him a nancy. All in all, it's okay.

He's got another new girl on his arm, but she looks bored and drunk throughout their whole conversation, even as Sam tries to draw her in. He wonders how long this one will last.

**1985**

He takes the train up North by himself, and can't help but compare it to last time, when they were giggly and looking forward to Chris' wedding.

It's a different church, but the flowers – they're too similar. Becky had wanted roses; bouquets of pinks and whites, and the white roses are here now too, only no pink in sight. They jar, too stark, too contrasting, against the black suits and mourning dresses.

The service is like they always are, when the deceased was neither believer nor saint. Full of platitudes and generalisations. The new girl Sam hadn't thought would last sits in the front row, mascara streaking down her cheeks and hand clasped in Chris', as Gene takes the pulpit and gives the one moving speech of the whole thing.

Sam didn't like Ray. He'd wondered about coming at all, thought he might be intruding after all this time when they were never close – but Annie had talked him into it in the end.

God. Shot down. Not unheard of, for a copper, but it never gets easier.

“Sam.” Gene leans against the wall next to him. The wake is at the Railway Arms, and the place is crushed with police officers, all chairs occupied.

“Hi Gene.”

“Where's your better half?”

“Had to work.”

“The perils of being a DI. Responsibility, but not enough to do what you like.” Sam smiles ruefully. “Heard you made DCI.”

Sam's been a DCI again for years, but the topic's never come up between them. “Got my own DI to boss around now.”

“Then home to be bossed around by one, I'd wager.”

Sam snorts; it's not that far from the truth. They drink in silence, until Sam thinks to add, “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“For-” he gestures with his glass, glad Nelson had set the bottles out. There's one on the window sill just behind them, and he'll be going for a top-up very soon. Gene looks like someone who needs to drown, tonight. “For your loss.”

Gene scoffs. “People usually say that to the missus, Tyler.”

Sam shrugs. “He was your friend. You're allowed to miss him too.”

Gene says nothing, just grabs the bottle and tops off both their glasses.

**1986-2005**

He avoids the north after that. Not completely on purpose, but there was no reason to go and London – London can be your whole world, if you let it. It can become a place you never need to leave, and that suits Sam.

He and Annie tie the knot – something of an afterthought for both of them, neither that concerned about a piece of paper, but it made certain practical matters easier. They'd headed down the registry office, just the two of them and another couple there for the same thing acting as witnesses. They'd honeymooned in Provence for a week, and come back home DCI Tyler and DI Cartwright because Annie had worried about changing her name at this point in her career, and Sam didn't want his name stamped on her if she didn't want it there.

Somehow, their lives spill away from them. There was never time for children, and he'll always be a little bit sad about that, but it's the way it goes sometimes. He's loved the life they had – and still have.

He retires at sixty-four, gold watch and a decent pension, because they're still a thing now, just after the millennium turns. Time feels different in the 2000s; he can feel it catching up to him, and not just in his knees that creak or the way he's lost most of his hair. He feels it like a countdown to 2006, like his memories are running out.

He realises he's scared. He's got used – on a world level, if not a personal one – to knowing what comes next. And soon he'll be as adrift as everyone else.

**2006**

He's seventy when he gets the call that gets him back on a train. He can't believe he's heading to Manchester now, of all times, with that day just around the corner. Annie had wanted to come with him; she knows when it is, of course she does, he's always told her everything and she's more than used to his craziness now. But she has to work. She's got another two years before her pension, and can't just take an unspecified amount of time off. It's not an emergency, it's not family.

It's Gene.

“I'm fine,” he grumbles, when the door finally opens. Sam stares at him. He's old, he knows, but Gene is older. Of course, he always knew that, but it's been two decades, and somehow the difference between sixty and eighty is stark. Sam might walk with a slight hunch – too many filing cabinets to the spine, perhaps – and glasses as a constant companion, but Gene's hair is white, and his face is heavily lined, and he leans as if his legs are going to give out. He's changed.

“You gonna let me in, Guv?”

Gene's eyes flicker at the old name, and he hobbles back to his living room, dropping down into a chair. “If you're here, I wouldn't mind a cup of tea.”

The assumption is familiar, but the tone – the phrasing is all wrong. Sam would have expected a demand and a shove in the direction of the kitchen, but perhaps a shove these days would send Gene over instead. He makes the tea.

“They called you then. You didn't have to come.”

Yes, the hospital had called him. Said Gene Hunt was dying, didn't have long left, and would be returning home for the duration. It wasn't until he'd hung up, Annie had come home, and he'd broken the news, that he realised. They called him. A man Gene hasn't set eyes on in twenty years.

Sam shrugs. “Figured I should see the old streets again.”

He hadn't; the dissonance of Manchester old and new had physically hurt. It had confused him with every turn and made him feel his age, wondering if dementia was setting in – unsure what road went where or what building existed when, 1970s and 2000s merging and neither making sense. He couldn’t help but think of his thirty seven year old self out there, somewhere, perhaps around each bend, about to go on such an adventure. About to go through Hell, and come out of it smiling. What he would do if they came face to face... not that his younger self would recognise him now.

“They just don't want me left for the rats. When I go.”

Sam swallows. He doesn't want to think about Gene gone. He's been a constant for thirty three years. And maybe they've not spoken, now, for longer than they had, but he'd still been out there. And now Sam's here, to sit and watch, and call the doctor when he finds Gene cold.

–

The days are repetitive. Gene can't manage much, so they're confined to the house. Sam lets him have all the booze and fags he wants, because it's not like it makes much difference at this point. He winces at the wracking coughs, doles out the pain relief on schedule, and hates himself for watching the clock, because this is Gene's life they're ticking down, but at the same time – it's not much of a life, is it?

He looks at Gene, and he looks at the episode of Neighbours they've already sat though once today, and he clicks off the set.

What harm can it do, now? He tells Gene everything.

He frames it like a story, like he's decided to turn their adventures into their own personal fairytale. It sort of works; Gene likes to think himself the knight, righting wrongs, protecting his kingdom, and Sam can play the sidekick when it suits him. But he knows there's too much truth to his words, too many loose strings that finally makes sense, too much tying in with what Tony Crane once claimed – and Gene's body may be failing, but his mind is as sharp as ever. When Sam finishes, throat dry from thousands of words dropped as stories, Gene looks at him steadily.

And sees him.

Sam drops his head, unable to bear that gaze. It doesn't matter that Gene thinks he's crazy – it's not like there'll be any consequences – but now he knows how many times Sam lied.

“Stick the kettle on Gladys,” is all Gene says, and they switch the telly back on in time for Eastenders.

–

He should have known. The days had been counting down, a mental calendar with each date crossed through with black marker pen, and today is it. Today he gets hit by a car.

Today is the day he finds Gene Hunt dead. Gone in his sleep, a peaceful end for a man who spent his life at war. Full circle.

There's not much he has to do in the end. As it wasn't a surprise, plans had already been made, and he just makes a few calls to set things in motion before sitting on the bed next to Gene. He thinks he might be in shock. He feels sort of numb.

He looks at the clock that had been ticking Gene's life away and thinks – now. It's now. He should feel something. Some impact as the crunch of metal sends him into the air, some ache as the road meets his head. But there's nothing. Somewhere out there one Sam Tyler is dying, and here is another one, watching the dead.

They take Gene away in the end, and leave him in an empty house. He curls up on the sofa he'd made his own over these last eight days, as Gene always preferred his armchair. He watches Neighbours.

–

He'd called Annie in the morning. She'd put in for emergency leave, swinging it with her seniority and judicious use of puppy dog eyes, still effective. An old DCI she hasn't seen in twenty years shouldn't count for compassionate leave, but she'd said about Sam, how he'd been the one there, and it'd been signed off on. They're better about that kind of thing now. In the seventies, she'd have been told to buck up. No one would have thought a man might need his wife there to help him through grief.

He'd fallen into her when she walked through the door, and she'd held him, and he'd cried even as things hadn't felt so fractured. Like he'd healed enough to let them come.

The funeral is small. Just him and Annie, Chris and Becky, and an elderly woman in the company of a young man – he thinks it might be Gene's ex-wife Doris and her son.

The wake is even smaller, Doris and son disappearing between church and pub. The four of them sit at a table and share a bottle of scotch and a couple of packets of crisps. Annie doesn't like scotch, only ever drank it to fit in, so he pours her smaller measures and ignores how every mouthful he sinks makes his eyes water.

It doesn't seem like much. For a man that lived so large; four mourners. Gene saved so many people.

Annie leaves that night, unsteady on her feet and eyes wide and wet as he kisses her goodbye at the train station. She holds a hand to his cheek and he holds onto it, but eventually lets her slip away on the fast train to London. She's got a job to do.

Gene's house is empty and dark when he falls through the door, but he puts on the lamp and turns the radio on. Gene has it tuned to an oldies station; music of the 50s and 60s, stuff Sam ribbed him about when he first landed on that other planet known as the 70s. He lets it wash over him now, lets himself be sung to sleep by crooners and a belly full of whiskey.

–

He's summoned by Gene's solicitor a few days later for the reading of the will. He showers, finds a razor and a clean shirt, and turns up mostly presentable.

They've probably seen worse.

Now that he's here, in this office, he just wants it over with. It's the whole reason he's stayed in Manchester, when he could be down in London with Annie, just one last job to do and then every box is ticked and he can go home.

That's probably why Gene picked Sam, in hindsight, rather than Chris – the friend he's actually kept in halfway contact with. Left to Chris there'd be things missed all over the place, but with Sam in charge – his picky pain, his deputy dawg DI – he knew things would be done properly.

One last job. And then he can rest.

The door opens, and the man from the funeral walks in, along with Chris and Becky. All four of them file into a conference room, and the secretary offers teas and coffees and biscuits, and the man asks if they have sparkling water, and Sam wants to grab him by the lapels and shove him into a wall and scream – but they don't do things that way any more. He settles for glaring; a dagger of a look the other man doesn't even see.

Some things were better back then.

“Welcome, everyone, thank you for coming.” The solicitor slides into a seat at the end of the table with a file folder. “I have here Gene Hunt's last will and testament. I won't keep you long, just know that what is set out here was Mr Hunt's wish.” Sam wonders how many fights they've seen break out, to be so blatant about stressing that point. He rests his head in his hands. “And thank you, Mr Tyler, for carrying out the particulars over these last few weeks.” He waves, without looking up.

“To Chris Skelton and wife, I leave the Cortina, plus their pick of my records and other personal effects.” The lawyer slides a key across the table. Gene has kept the car in tip-top condition across the years; now it's a true classic car, and still a beauty. Chris looks at the key in awe.

“To Daniel Murphy, I leave the contents of my savings and current accounts.” That must be the man from the funeral; typical Gene, in a way, to look after the son of his ex-wife in a way that can't be argued with or thanked. “That adds up to around £15,000,” the solicitor explains. “We can sort out bank details and access information afterwards.” The man nods, but he looks pleased. Sam frowns. Quite the windfall for Mr Murphy, and all from a man who was no doubt pilloried for most of his life.

“To Sam Tyler-” His head snaps up. “I leave my house.” No key is slid across the table, but that's because it's already in Sam's pocket, has been for weeks. “And this.” A small envelope. He picks it up, staring at his name written in that familiar hand on the front. The seal is unbroken. Words from beyond the grave.

He and Chris and Becky return to the house, and they tiptoe about like they're intruding on Sam, while looking through Gene's belongings to see what they want. He makes tea to get himself out of the way, and afterwards they all drink an awkward cuppa surrounded by their choices. There's a stack of records, and CDs too – seems Gene wasn't completely stuck in the past – as well as a few books and photos. Becky asks hesitantly about the dining room table, and her tone finally gets Sam to smile. “Yes,” he says. “Please.” He knows they have quite the brood these days, kids and grand kids. “You'd make better use of it than I ever would. Or Gene ever did.”

He waits until later, much later, to open the letter.

_Gladys_ , it says, and Sam can't help the way it brings a smile to his face. He traces the line made by the pen.  _In case you and the plonk ever want to move back North. If not, sell it and put a monkey on the longest odds of the National for me. The Gene Genie._

–

He doesn't make any decisions; Annie says it's not a good time for him to be doing it, and he trusts her. So he shuts the house up, asks a neighbour to keep an eye on it, and heads back down to London.

London feels like home, he thinks. But so did Manchester. Once, and then again.

**2007**

He falls back into his routine. He volunteers now, to pass the time, with at-risk kids. He's got enough of the police officer left in him to keep them in check, and he likes to think he helps – at least some of them. He cooks dinner for when Annie gets back, and they watch telly in the evenings.

He wakes up one morning and he's checking his iPhone – the kids are so surprised how adept he is with new technology – when the date catches his eye. It makes him sit down hard on a kitchen chair.

“Everything alright, Sam?” Annie has hairpins in her mouth, halfway through her usual morning whirlwind, but she takes the time to look at him.

“I wake up today,” he says. “I come back.”

Two Sam Tylers alive in the world again, one here, one there.

“Oh.” He can tell she's not sure how to process it. Over the years she's got used to him, of course, and he thinks she even believes him sometimes – one too many things he's said have come to pass. But she's practical, above all, and time travel and comas and two Sam Tylers still stretches her limits.

“Don't worry,” he says, standing up again and pecking her on the lips before pouring brewed coffee into her to-go cup. “It doesn't change anything.”

–

It does change things. The shock of Gene's death had pulled him out of it, but now he feels the countdown again. His younger self, out there, living the last of his memories. He's going to jump. 

How he felt back then... it's fuzzy now. It was a long time ago, and he wasn't in a good place, he was an automaton, he was existing without living. He remembers cutting himself, that meeting, he remembers walking up to the roof. He knows he was desperate, in a way – would have to have been to take that run and make that leap. He's so glad he did, that he got to live this life instead of that one.

But still. His heart rate is up, constantly, and he's on edge. Annie is busy, distracted, getting ready to retire but too conscientious to leave things undone. He's weirdly glad about it, as it lets him panic in peace. He doesn’t want to talk this through, he wants to ignore it. Hope it goes away.

Each new week is another box ticked.

What happened on the day he jumped? He can't remember. He doesn't know if he checked a newspaper that whole last week – or the internet, or anything. He'd cut himself off, tried throwing himself into the work. He's running out of memories.

The FA cup final. Sam puts a bet on though it breaks his heart to do so – United to lose to Chelsea, 1-0. It comes through, and he scoops up his winnings. Gene would have liked that, he thinks, as he dumps the lot in a collection pot for Cancer Research.

That was it. The last thing he remembers. He's got nothing from now on, just future spreading out, wide and unknown.

He goes home. He cooks dinner for Annie, and he watches the news in the evening. He's greedy for information, for something to ground him, to _know_.

He repeats the process, four more times, and on the fifth night he attends Annie's retirement party. She's just as beautiful as she ever was, and she's fizzing over with plans for them now they have time together again, and he thinks – maybe, with her at his side. The future won't be so scary after all.

On the sixth day, he doesn't expect to feel an impact, no headache as another him lies on pavement, blood spreading on tarmac. And he doesn't. The doorbell rings instead, just as his watch ticks down, and he opens it to find a messenger with an envelope. An envelope with his name written on it in a familiar hand, and a stylus for him to sign for receipt.

One Sam Tyler in the world.

He makes a cup of tea before he opens it.

_Sam,_ it says, and he traces the letters just like he did last time. Gone two years and still managing to surprise him. 

_You told me once this is the day you die. Now I say you're off your rocker, but you're also a stubborn bastard, so if you believe it, it's got a decent chance of coming true. Don't jump Sam. Let that nancy-boy poofter take a swan dive if he wants, but you – you go home to Annie. _

_I'll see you when it's time._

There's no signature, but there doesn’t need to be. It's been two years, and today is the day he died, and today is the first day of his life. The first day he's un-moored, unknowing, free. He cries at the kitchen table – fat, wet tears that leave splodges on the paper, tears loud enough to draw Annie from the bedroom and the first lie in of her retirement.

She holds him, and he holds out the letter, and she reads it silently, holding him tighter. Eventually, he stops.

“Are you going to listen to him?” she asks quietly, lips pressed to his hair.

“Yeah,” he says. His voice sounds thick, but he smiles, and it feels right. True. “You had plans, for our retirement. What do you want to do first?”

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea last night, and today I sat down and wrote over 4.5k? I don't know where it came from. It wasn't what I planned to do with my Saturday...


End file.
